Making a Tablet the Easy Way

According to Yu Chen, chief executive of Tao Machine, one can develop a tablet from scratch in six months with a team of 10 to 15 people.

Tao Machine, based in Seaside, Calif., has already developed two seven-inch tablets, which it was showing at a small Consumer Electronics Show booth with its Chinese partner Hangzhou Avisi Electronics.

One of the tablets resembled Apple Inc.’s iPad, right down to a button that looked exactly like the iPad’s home button, though pressing it made the device go to sleep rather than take the user back to the home screen.

When the similarity was pointed out, Mr. Chen said that they had “just bought the casing (from someone else),” though he admitted that the familiarity of the design was a positive in selling the device.

Still, Avisi has made its own innovations. A second model that it just finished replaces the button with three smaller ones.

Mr. Chen also said he disagrees with Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s choice of tablet size. The iPad “is good, but it’s very big and too heavy,” he said. “Seven inches is the future.”